Covering Everything about Memory Chips

Why do we say flash

From time to time I am asked: “Why is NAND flash called NAND?” or “Why do we say RAM?” and similar questions. A lot of this has to do with history, and a lot of terminology which is now obsolete. To understand these strange names, you have to understand the history of memories. The Computer History Museum (CHM) in Silicon Valley is a great help in this vein.

Since the Memory Guy has been in Silicon Valley since 1977, a lot of this information is stored in my head. Let me try to share it with you in a way that I hope will make more sense, and will help outsiders to understand these odd names.